NASA STS-135 Report #11 6 p.m. CDT Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Mission Control Center, Houston, Texas

HOUSTON – Atlantis crew members spent much of Wednesday moving equipment and supplies from the multipurpose logistics module Raffaello to the International Space Station.

They had some help from station Commander Andrey Borisenko and Flight Engineers Sergei Volkov and Satoshi Furukawa in the transfer operations. The bottom line was that the more than 9,400 pounds of material in Raffaello was considerably reduced.

Station lead flight director Chris Edelen said at an afternoon briefing that about half of the cargo had been moved from Raffaello and the shuttle,s middeck to the space station. Almost 5,700 pounds of unneeded equipment and supplies from the station will be packed aboard the module for return to Earth.

The transfer activity can be strenuous. While the cargo bags are weightless, they do have mass. They require effort to be put in motion, effort to change their direction and effort to stop their motion.

Crew members opened Pressurized Mating Adaptor 3, attached to the Tranquility node, and stored some of the material from Raffaello there. On Tuesday spacewalkers had put an insulating cover on the outside of PMA-3 to protect it from temperature extremes.

A little before noon CDT, all four shuttle crew members talked with representatives of WBNG-TV and WICZ-TV in Binghamton, N.Y., near Pilot Doug Hurley,s home town of Apalachin, and KGO-TV of San Francisco. Mission Specialist Rex Walheim is from nearby San Carlos.

The next status report will be issued after crew wakeup or earlier if warranted.